Prayer at Stow Council Long Established Tradition

Members of Stow City Council have been opening their regular meetings with a prayer for at least 55 years.

Now it's a practice that the U.S. Supreme Court will take a closer look at later this year, as the court will review the tradition for many public bodies across the country of opening government meetings with a prayer.

In November 1958 Stow voters approved a charter amendment that established the formal practice of opening regular or special council meetings with a prayer.

Section 4.07 of the city’s charter states “in recognition of our dependence upon Almighty God for guidance, each regular or special meeting shall be opened with prayer by a member of council, the clerk of council, a guest, or by the observance of not less than one minute of silent prayer.”

Stow Councilman Jim Costello, who serves as president of council, said the duty of saying a prayer falls, on a rotating basis, to the member of council tasked with making that night’s opening remarks.

“Now it’s not always a prayer,” Costello said. “Some people give quotes from famous writers. When I have it close to a holiday, I try to do a prayer that is historical.”

The particular case the Supreme Court will hear centers on Greece, N.Y., where for nearly 11 years the opening prayer at town council meetings was almost always led by a member of the local Christian clergy who were invited to the meetings via formal letters from town officials.

At issue is whether that community in upstate New York violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment in the Constitution, which essentially states government shall make no laws establishing religion.

Stow Law Director Brian Reali said, as he reads the case, the issue is whether the practices in Greece amounted to the local government conveying that it favored one religious group over another.

Reali said the way Stow practices praying before its regular meetings varies greatly from the case in New York. Among the differences, Stow does not hold prayers before every public, government meeting but only at the twice-monthly regular council meetings and special meetings.

“I don’t think Stow gives the impression of endorsing or establishing a religion,” Reali said. “We don’t have clergy come in to lead the prayer. We rotate who recites the ‘prayer,’ but there are times when there is not a prayer at all, but a solemn thought, a poem.

“As I read this case and other cases, a religious prayer at a meeting is not necessarily a problem,” he said. “It is the fact that the court thinks the town of Greece went too far based on picking the prayer giver, the number of Christian prayers (and) requested participation by the audience. In other words, the totality of all the circumstances.”

At Stow’s most recent regular council meeting, May 23, Councilman Brian Lowdermilk opened meeting with a prayer for the victims of a tornado that had recently struck in Oklahoma.

Lowdermilk ended the prayer with the traditionally Christian phrase “in Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.”

Costello said, in his 10 years on council, he’s never gotten a complaint from a resident about the practice.

“Personally I don’t have a problem with it,” he said.

The Supreme Court likely won’t issue a decision on the case centering on the practices in Greece, N.Y., until 2014.

Reali said he suspects it would be difficult for the court to hand down some strict rule banning a practice that even Congress has maintained for decades.

“The (New York) case is out of the Second District Court of Appeals for the United States. It is not binding law on Stow as we sit in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals,” he said. “So, we really need to see what the U.S. Supreme Court comes down with.”

If the Supreme Court ruling has nothing to do with prohibiting prayer at public meetings, it likely would take a change to Stow’s city charter to eliminate or alter the practice at council meetings.

Stow’s next charter review is not scheduled until 2015.